Left garage freezer door cracked one night and found water from sweating/thawing items in the freezer and the GFCI tripped. Dried it out for a few days, plugged it in. Trips.
Ok, plugged it into another GFCI on a different circuit and breaker and it works fine.
So I replace the GFCI and plug in the freezer. Nice it works. Wrong wake up in the morning and see that it is tripped.
Back to the other circuit and GFCI. Been working great.

Little info. Both GFCI outlets feed other outlets. The original one never trips without the freezer plugged in. I can even power a compressor off of it.
The outlet that does work is fed from a GFCI in the kitchen which runs a toaster and coffee maker.

Any ideas appreciated.

There maybe water, freezing and thawing, where the gasket is. And it’s touching the heating element and chassis. I’m talking about the defrost heating element that most, if not all, refrigerators/freezers have.

KOT

One a 20amp and the other a 15amp?

Great idea, I did turn off the heating element that prevents moisture on the area of door seal on day one. Did not help. Not much I can do about the defrost. Unless it has a manual option. Will check it out.

The big question is why one GFCI trips and one does not.

Maybe the freezer has nothing to do with the GFCI tripping. Maybe it’s something else on the circuit. Or maybe the freezer puts the circuit over load.

Are lime and load in the correct order for neuteral?

Maybe try disconnecting the load outlet entirely from the offending gfci?

I'm with Fins: check what else is plugged into either and both GFCIs. See if anything cycles on and off with a clock, or as a result of temperature sensing.

For instance, we've got too few circuits at our place. You can't use the toaster and the microwave if the refrigerator happens to start up while they're both going. The thing is, the fridge is pretty much silent, so it's not obvious that a third load has come on.

What if there is a bad connection in the GFI circuit and it is doing its job?

Will check load. However there is nothing plugged in and it does not trip if anything gets plugged in including an air compressor.

I will try disconnecting the load anyways.

Both are 15 amp circuits

I don’t believe overload. Remember I can run freezer on circuit that has toaster and coffee maker without issues. It’s still on now over 24 hours. However, if I plug it into the original circuit the GFCI trips.

Swap GFCIs. Will show if the issue follows the outlet or the circuit.

Thank you. Looking at beginning of post you can see I have put in a new GFCI. I tripped the new one in original location. But never trips without freezer plugged in.
Only difference is original location that trips, the freezer is plugged into a GFCI outlet.
The current location the freezer is plugged into an outlet off load side of GFCI, tested and known to trip when test is pressed on GFCI.

By the way, is the freezer a two wire or three wire (with ground) connection?

You mention that you have plugged the freezer into other GFI circuits and there
were no issues. How was this done, what is different? Extension cord? Move the freezer? Simply stretch the cord to another outlet? In any of these cases, does the freezer touch another ground? Something very weird could be happening, such as a pool of water inside the freezer cabinet shifting when you move the unit.

Just for wild research, use an Ohmmeter to check for an unauthorized connection to the ground pin (if any) on the freezer's power plug.

Some digital VOM's have a logging function. Usually, this logging function does not work well, but you might catch some sort of transient. If you can measure current, log each of the power cord legs. If you can't measure current, pay close attention to voltage drops -- especially while the freezer compressor is starting.

An edge case could be that the freezer occasionally restarts too soon and you have a locked rotor situation. I don't know why this would always strike a particular GFI, but Murphy has a great sense of irony.

Buzz. Three prong plug. Simple roll freezer over to other outlet/circuit.

Garage and Kitchen are supposed to be on different circuits- how many outlets are connected to the Load side of the GFCI. Are the wires back-stabbed, wired series or parallel?

If the wires connected downstream from the Load connection are back-stabbed, their connection isn't very good to start with and the connection can degrade over time.

Do you have a lot of spiders? They like to build nests inside of junction boxes.

Ruling out that the new GFCI is not bad - could happen. OTOH, are you sure the kitchen GFCI is good and trips as it should?
[Link: homedepot.com]

You're not plugging into kitchen GFCI, but curcuit fed by GFCI - right? Are you sure the outlet you're using is wired to the GFCI output(not it's feed)? Test tripping the kitchen GFCI kills the other outlet - right?


edit: didn't read full response. I see you tested outlet to trip with GFCI. I'd still swap them to see if the problem follows the outlet.